How to Bypass Animal Crossing Pocket Camp’s SafetyNet Bans

Animal Crossing Pocket Camp is Nintendo’s latest mobile offering for Android and iOS devices. You take the form of one of the only humans in a campsite where you meet other sentient animals and help them complete tasks and make friends with them. The game is starting to become a hit, just like Pokemon Go did, but also just like Pokemon Go the game is protected by SafetyNet. This means unlocked or rooted devices, unless they are running the latest version of Magisk, will not be able to play the game. What’s more, Nintendo actually bans accounts which trip SafetyNet, leaving you with error code 802-5808 denoting a SafetyNet ban forever. This means if Google updates SafetyNet’s root identification methods before Magisk is updated to work around that, your data may be lost forever if you launch Animal Crossing. But is it really gone forever?

Error code 802-5808, a SafetyNet ban in Animal Crossing Pocket Camp

I’ve been playing the game just like thousands of other rooted users have been, and I’ve tripped SafetyNet and had my game wiped twice now. Linking to a Nintendo account deals with most of the problems related with that, but the first time I played I wasn’t linked to a Nintendo account and so I lost my data permanently. I found an easy way to unban my account however and to restore my data when snooping through the data files of the application, which I’ve tested by tripping SafetyNet and attempting to restore my data, which I did. Here’s how!

Once you’re ready, follow the next steps below. If you have linked your Nintendo account already to your Animal Crossing Pocket Camp then you can skip to step 2.

Step 1

First, you need to link your Nintendo account to Animal Crossing Pocket Camp if you haven’t already. This is because the next step will delete your account from your device, and if it isn’t linked to your Nintendo account then you will not be able to get your data back. Open the Animal Crossing application and click the button at the bottom to link your Nintendo account, create an account, and when you’re finished the application should launch again with the following message.

Now, try to launch the game and you should receive the error shown at the beginning. Next, force stop the application and move on to the next step. Your data is still stored on Nintendo’s servers and has also been linked to your Nintendo Account.

Step 2

In this folder, you can see many XML files but we will be focusing on the deviceAccount.xml file. This file houses all of the data required for you to connect to and login to your Animal Crossing Pocket Camp account. When you start the game, a username and password are randomly generated for you to log in which is stored in this file, along with a session ID. Make a backup first of this file and then delete it. This is in case anything goes wrong.

Step 3

Next, launch the game, and you will be greeted with a prompt to update the game. Accept it, and once finished you must log into your Nintendo account. Now navigate to the main menu in the upper left and scroll down and select data restore. That’s it!

Main Menu

Data Restore

Conclusion

So effectively what is happening is that all of your device login information is stored in the deviceAccount.xml file, and when your device is flagged as having tripped SafetyNet this is permanent until you delete your game and begin again. We can easily bypass this by linking our game to our Nintendo account and then deleting this file. This should in theory also allow for multiple accounts on the one device, so long as Nintendo accounts aren’t used. Let us know if it works for you!

About Author

18-year-old Irish guy with a massive interest in all things security and technology. Computer Science student in UCD. Originally wrote for the technology site Pixel Spot. Android user since Eclair. Direct inquiries to adamconway99@gmail.com.

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